Much Ado About Nothing

When I first made my blog, I posted a link to it on facebook so some of my friends could follow it. I don't think anyone really has, but my aunt commented on my first post, saying that I should read Much Ado About Nothing. Then lo and behold, it was the play I was assigned! It was meant to be...

I'm rather excited to read this play for multiple reasons, the first being the fact that it's a comedy. I am very fond of Shakespeare's comedies and I've heard really good things about this one. I'm also rather excited to see how some of the major themes play out. One such theme is deception and masks. Masks are used throughout the play to hide the identities of some key characters. Although the audience knows the face behind the mask, not all the other characters do, which makes for some very comedic and plot-essential moments. As you can tell by my picture, I rather like masks and masquerades. If you've never seen The Phantom of the Opera, they're pretty awesome and are fairly archetypal as far as identity concealment goes. So this is a theme I'll probably be blogging about a lot.

I'm also rather excited to see how Beatrice and Benedick interact. They are the fairly archetypal unlikely lovers kind of pair, which should make for some fun comparisons. I'm also intrigues by Hero's name and may blog about Shakespeare's use of it to characterize her. I may also compare her with Hiro from Heroes if I see enough of a connection.

There's a lot of films for this play out and I plan to watch more than one of them. I'm at the very least going to watch the Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh version and the BBC version. What I would really like to see is Berlioz's opera Beatrice et Benedict. And maybe if I have the time, I'll even read the play in the "original" Klingon!